London Art student turns fish and chip scraps into dinner plates

An art student from London has created a ceramic plate utilising fish and chips waste from a seafood restaurant in Margate, Kent.

Carly Breame, a graduate of Central Saint Martins art school, collaborated with Angela’s to showcase how local resources from restaurants can be developed into closed loop systems to support regeneration.

To create the plate, Carly utilised a combination of fish bones, which were fired in a kiln and crushed into ash for the clay body, and potato peelings which were also fired at a low temperature and ground into a powder for the glazing. 

It is one of four ceramics that make up the artist’s Off the Menu collection, each one emulating the course being served. A starter dish, using a combination of oyster, mussel, scallop shells and crushed wine bottle glass, is complemented by a dessert bowl made from local clay, orange peel, banana peeling and mint stalks. 

There is also a cup that repurposes coffee husks and cigarette ash.

Commenting on her designs, which will be rolled out at Angela’s and its sister restaurant Dory’s, Carly says: “By replacing raw ingredients in the ceramics with restaurant resources, the materials themselves tell a story of the restaurant. Off the Menu demonstrates the principle of developing sustainable local ceramic systems and serves as a manifesto for future restaurants.”

She adds: “Lee and Rob, the owners of Angela’s and Dory’s, saw the progress of the tests throughout the project and were extremely happy about the developments; being able to utilise their own resources to create vehicles for future food was as exciting to them as it was for me.”

Carly is now looking at how a larger pool of resources can be sourced and produced to scale up production, enabling more restaurants to adopt her process.